Arjun Puri

Undergraduate Fellow

You work with the Plantago plant and mildew; this study has a lot of implications for disease and disease transmission. Do you think of the work in those terms?

“It’s definitely necessary to think of those implications. My view on work like this is that it doesn’t really have a purpose unless it’s going to help somebody. I would like any work that I do to have large-scale implications.”

Were you ever a pre-med student?

“It’s been a long time since I even considered pre-med. I had the revelation in high school that there will be a lot of jobs in the environmental sector because of all the trouble that we’re facing and will face in the future. If there’s any cause that I could join that really needs some help, I feel like it’s this one.”

Arjun worked with Rachel Penczykowski's Plant Disease team during summer 2018. Learn more about their host-pathogen coevolution research here.